Enterprise Data Center

Recognized as one of America's top 100 law firms, Venable LLP and its lawyers address all aspects of corporate and business law, complex litigation, intellectual property, and government affairs. Venable serves corporate, institutional, governmental, nonprofit, and individual clients throughout the United States and around the world from its headquarters in Washington, D.C. and offices in Maryland, New York, and Virginia. Founded more than a century ago and chaired by former U.S. Attorney General Benjamin R. Civiletti, Venable distinguishes itself with a highly consultative, services-centered approach.

Like all law firms, much of Venable's business entails vast amounts of paperwork, from documentation to client records and legal briefs. Efficiently managing numerous files across
a high-speed network, spanning multiple offices, can be difficult and costly. Moreover, given the confidential nature of legal documents, file transfers must not only be easy and cost-effective, but also highly secure.

In order to consistently provide legal services of exceptional breadth and quality, Venable has always pursued an aggressive growth path including corporate acquisitions. Clearly, acquiring new lawyers and practice areas requires integration and coordination in all areas of the business including the IT infrastructure. What's more, the addition of new users results in additional usage costs and can cause some network downtime. In light of its continual expansion, Venable strategically planned to optimize Web-based application delivery, reduce network downtime during acquisitions, and contain costs during data center consolidation. In short, as a services-based business, Venable wanted to leverage every IT infrastructure opportunity to maximize business efficiency while minimizing expenses.

Venable implemented Cisco® Wide Area Application Services (WAAS) to provide its branch office employees LAN-like access to centrally hosted applications, servers, storage, and multimedia in a common managed form. As phase I of its WAAS roll-out, the firm deployed seven Cisco Wide Area Engine Series WAE-511® appliances, along with Cisco Wide-Area File System (WAFS) software. These WAAS products provide high-speed access to enterprise applications and data and are designed to help reduce the high cost of managing branch offices.

Venable uses Cisco WAFS to stay connected with its branch offices in multiple states and to ensure standardized, high-quality client service delivery. Cisco WAFS provides Venable lawyers and staff quick and easy access to such centrally managed systems as client billing, status reports, and IT software upgrades. For example, Venable can launch, in the data center, the latest versions of Microsoft Office, Adobe Acrobat, and the Hummingbird Enterprise DM5 document management system, and deploy those applications immediately to users' desktops, regardless of location.

Using Cisco WAAS, Venable has reduced bandwidth costs and optimized its WAN, running at 100 Mbps, to keep information flow among its offices fast, secure, and efficient. The WAE-511 appliances seamlessly integrated with Venable's Microsoft Windows infrastructure and file-sharing platform, and easily interoperate with the Cisco routers and switches in place. Following this WAAS deployment, E. Pete Karelis, Venable network architect, and his staff were able to create a "template" for integrating newly acquired businesses or branch offices with little to no downtime. Furthermore, they have taken advantage of the valuable security features of the WAE-511 boxes, delivering antivirus updates, and protecting branch office data inside the data center.

Venable has truly enforced its data center consolidation initiatives with Cisco WAAS. The Cisco WAE-511 has enabled the firm to leverage all of its existing IT investments while enhancing its high-speed network. In a services-based environment, where results, trust, reliability, and confidentiality are all paramount, the Cisco WAE-511 allows Venable to deliver on promises to its clients while optimizing its own infrastructure and budget.

According to Karelis, "We are extremely happy with our choice to go with the Cisco Wide Area File Services. Our clients have high expectations when they give us their most pressing legal problems-problems that generally have a number of files to go with them. With WAFS, we can optimize branch operations on par with our headquarters processes. This enables us to provide clients with the best possible service quickly and with a financial framework that works for us all."

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